Whatever Hope Is Yours
by Captain Evermind
Summary: In which Matthew and Mary struggle to come to terms with his injury, and what it means for their growing relationship.
1. Elegy

_A/N: So, I tried to prevent myself from writing more Downton fic... It didn't work so well. This is intended as a something of a trifecta, but could equally well be read as three independent one-shots. Taken together, they explore the effect of Matthew's injury on his relationship with Mary. I've always thought that the war was largely responsible for the growing intimacy and maturity of their relationship, and it's an aspect which doesn't get nearly enough attention in fanfic! The first is very slow and sensual in tone, the second is more thought-based and emotional, and the third follows a more traditional story arc. I'm not entirely sure that the three work well together, as there's not much in the way of repeated motif etc. I would be interested in your opinions. :-)_

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><p><em>The title comes from the following verse by Wilfred Owen, which was written about two enemy soldiers, but which rather seems to fit for Matthew and Mary!<em>

'_Strange friend', I said 'here is no cause to mourn.'_

'_None,' said the other, 'save the undone years,_

_The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,_

_Was my life also; I went hunting wild, _

_After the wildest beauty in the world,_

_Which lies not calm in eyes or braided hair,_

_But mocks the steady running of the hour,_

_And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.'_

_ -Wilfred Owen, 'Strange Meeting'._

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><p><span>Whatever Hope Is Yours.<span>

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><p><em>I. Elegy<em>_._

_Pain, that unpurposed, matchless elemental; stronger than fear or grief, stranger than love._

_ -Robert Graves, 'Surgical Ward: Men'._

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><p>For years now, she had imagined touching him.<p>

She watched, as if from a great distance, as Sybil bent over him. He lay so still. He seemed hardly to breathe. She felt her own breath stop as she gazed at him.

As if she had never seen them before, Mary watched her sister's hands. Slim and brown, defter, daintier than her own. The tapered fingers slipped momentarily on the first button of Matthew's pyjamas. He did not stir. As the row of buttons fell away, a sliver of pale chest was exposed, the skin grey and stippled with abrasion. He looked so cold.

"I don't want to lift him if we can avoid it," Sybil said, and Mary nodded blindly, oblivious to everything but the words drumming in her mind. _Probable spinal damage. _Sybil took Matthew's left arm, slipping the pyjama jacket from his shoulder and tugging the sleeve down over his wrist. At her nod of encouragement, Mary stepped hesitantly forward to take his right. In a kind of numbness that was beyond terror, she grasped the pyjama sleeve, placing a hand over his bicep in order to work it loose. At the contact, a tiny gasp escaped her, and she drew her hand away.

"He's warm," she explained, turning in agitation toward Sybil. "He looked so cold."

A look of compassion flickered in Sybil's eyes.

"Here," she whispered. Taking Mary's hand, she slipped it beneath Matthew's jacket and placed it on his chest. Mary trembled, wanting and yet not wanting to tear her hand away, but Sybil held it steady. Beneath her palm, Matthew's body was reassuringly warm, and faintly, it seemed that she felt the beat of his heart, matching the erratic pounding of her own pulse.

"It's alright, Mary," Sybil murmured gently. "He's alive, and we can make him well again."

Mary nodded, ashamed of her moment of fear. Her palm contracted slightly against Matthew's breast, and his skin was warm and pliant and living. She felt as foolish as a child and shaky with relief.

"Of course," she said, smiling at Sybil, with an attempt at her normal confidence. "I'm sorry, darling. What do you need me to do?"

His limbs were frail and yielding, bruised and swollen with infection. Elbows and fingers caught in his sleeves as they tugged them loose. Mary's thumb traced the depression between the bone of his wrist and the vein, her heartbeat jumping with every throb of his pulse, every tiny contraction of muscle. His forearms were broad and angular; pale beneath, but flushing bronze above, the fine, fair hair showing pale against the darkened skin. His arms, his hands, familiar, and yet changed: strengthened and browned, damaged and broken. His nails were torn to the quick, and bleeding.

Together, Mary and Sybil worked the stained pyjama jacket down beneath his unresisting body to where the small of his back provided the point of least resistance. Sybil tugged the jacket gently out from under him; it came away with a rusty stain, releasing a sharp, thick stench of blood.

For the first time, Mary saw him laid bare before her. Deep through the shoulders and chest, surprisingly slender about the hips and waist. His torso was leaner than she had imagined, his stomach a hollow scoop beneath the rib cage. She wondered when he'd last eaten a decent meal. Spread-eagled across the sheets, he looked surprisingly child-like, his chest bare of any but the lightest tracery of hair. Child-like, and yet so obviously a man. Even now, _even here_, something in her was stirred at the sight of him. A sharp pang of desire flared in her gut, coupled almost immediately to a lurching, sickening feeling of regret. Her eyes flickered across the sharp hip bones, the erotic swirl of dark hair about his navel, and she felt a visceral wrench that she did not quite care to analyse. This was the first time she had seen this, she realised. A naked man, in the full light of day; and not just any man, but _Matthew._ The same man who had held her, his touch a torment, his kisses passionate, instinctive, necessary. The same man. But terribly, irrevocably changed. There were wounds scattered across his torso, and scars beneath the wounds. Her eyes traced them, a shocking and indelicate inventory. A ragged chip of flesh removed high on his ribs; a neat, still-bleeding slice along his collar-bone; a lattice-work of scarring, mauve and white.

Taking up the cloth that Sybil passed her, she dipped it briefly in the basin and wrung it out. The steam smelt of disinfectant, bitter and touched the cloth to the ugly tear at Matthew's collar-bone, and imagined him flinching at the sting. The congealed mass came away reluctantly; the bright, inconstant blood, made liquid again, trailed in a slow rivulet down the crease of his chest. Legitimised somehow by water and disinfectant, Mary reached for him. She touched him, as she had imagined touching him once, in another life. Granted access at last by blood, her hands caressed the beloved body, her fingers flickering over the contours of his ribs, skimming lightly over the taut sweep of his abdomen.

Slowly, sorrowfully, Mary and Sybil worked together, counting every injury, tracing every scar, anointing every wound with iodine. With some difficulty, Sybil worked Matthew's pyjama trousers loose, tugging the waistband down to the base of his hips. Prosaically, she stripped him, folding a clean towel across his loins for the sake of decency, though whether his or theirs, Mary didn't know. She was astounded at the mundane competence with which Sybil undressed him, scarcely sparing him a glance as she lifted his ankle slightly to free the garment. Since when had her baby sister become so cool, so detached? Keeping his back as straight as they could, they turned him to lie half on his side. The reek of blood grew fierce, and as Sybil eased the stained dressings loose, the wound was exposed: a mass of blasted flesh, from which a stench arose, gangrenous and foul. Mary's breath caught in her teeth with a sharp hiss.

"Oh, Matthew . . ." Sybil murmured.

The wound was deep and ugly looking, dark with semi-congealed blood. The shape of the torn flesh brought to mind some brutal and violent impact. Mary's hand slipped gently down the curve of his waist towards the wound, and he stirred slightly, muscles shifting and re-arranging themselves beneath her palm. A breath escaped him, a tiny, incoherent noise of pain.

With all the care and tenderness they could manage, the two girls bent low over his back, easing away the dirt and crusted blood, teasing out splinters of wood and stone, trimming away the ragged, blackened flesh. It was long and difficult work, made more so as the effects of the morphine started to wear off and Matthew began to stir. At times as they worked he whimpered or flinched away, his muscles shaking, his skin slippery with sweat.

After a time, it began to rain. Softly at first, but gradually increasing in force as the sky outside grew greyer. Fat, sullen raindrops dashed against the hospital windows; slipping, trailing, like liquid quicksilver against the glass. The sky darkened, thunder rolling faint and far off, and the light in the hospital dimmed, until Sybil was forced to fetch an electric lamp to aid their work. Mary's thoughts strayed to the men still in France: raindrops swallowed up by the quagmire. It was all too easy to imagine bullets beneath the pounding of the rain. A bone-deep tremor ran through Matthew's body, and she wondered if he heard the same.

At long last, the task was done. Mary's limbs shook, both with fatigue and with aching, long-suppressed grief. Her vision blurred with the effort of concentration, and she felt a rush of love and admiration for Sybil, whose hands were steady as she taped a fresh dressing into place across the small of Matthew's back. Mary helped her to manoeuvre a pair of clean, powder-blue pyjama trousers up over his hips, settling the waistband against the new bandage as lightly as possible. Satisfied at last, Sybil sat back, shaking the stiffness from her shoulders.

"Can you hold him while I get his jacket on?" she asked.

Matthew stirred again, his fingers curling and uncurling against the sheet. Settling herself on the edge of the bed, Mary reached for him, easing his weight gently from the pillows in order to trouble his injury as little as might be. His weight surprised her; the muscles in her arms tensed to lift him, and she held him at a distance, wary of the damage to his spine. With her right arm braced beneath him, she supported his back, cradling his head in her left hand.

His body was warm: soft and smooth, naked and unbearable as a firebrand. Traces of water and disinfectant still lingered, scrawled like tear-tracks across his skin. The trail of fine hair below his navel was in disarray, an eddy of dark, damp curls that she ached to smooth. She held him to her, feeling the damp seeping through the thin flannel of her dress. Iodine bled through the fabric, staining her white collar, and the skin beneath. It was the first time that she had held him in her arms.

Briefly, while Sybil was occupied wrestling an unresponsive arm into a sleeve, she allowed her head to fall forward into the hollow of his neck. For a tiny instant, while Sybil's attention was diverted, her mouth touched the soft, sweet skin at the base of his throat. She breathed in the smell of gunpowder and disinfectant, and felt her temple grazed by an abrasive, unshaven jaw. And then the moment was gone, and she was forced to shift her grip to allow Sybil to pass the pyjama jacket beneath her arm. Gently, she lowered Matthew back onto the pillows. And now it was _her_ fingers slipping over his buttons, her hands trembling with an emotion more than simple grief, as she fought the overwhelming impulse to lay herself down beside him.

Something of her distress must have showed in her face, for when she lifted her head her sister was watching her with entirely too much sympathy in her eyes.

"I should go and help with the others," she said tactfully. "You won't mind doing the last little bit on your own will you?"

'Of course not," Mary answered, a sob half-choking in her throat. Her voice was too bright, too quick; she knew it. She had to turn her face away.

For a long time after Sybil had left, she merely gazed at him. The rain thudded against the window panes, streaming steadily from the flooded gutters, gurgling in the over-full drains. The basin of disinfectant had long gone cold. Scarcely aware of her own thoughts, Mary re-filled it with clean warm water, testing the heat of it against the inside of her wrist as she had seen other nurses do. Settling herself again on the bed beside Matthew, it struck her for the first time how beautiful he looked. His face, beneath the shadows, was boyish, exquisite. In sleep, he seemed almost immortal. His lashes fluttered; a longed-for, half-imagined flicker of cerulean blue; she wanted only for him to wake.

Mary raised the damp cloth to his face, washing away the residue of grime and gunpowder that coloured his skin. She frowned for a moment over his hair – she would have liked to wash it, but was fearful of chilling him. She laid her hand against his forehead momentarily, carding the tangled locks through her fingers, stroking the untidy bang back from his brow. He probably had lice, like all the men. Brittle mud crumbled beneath her fingertips. A fistful of tarnished gold. She really would have to wash it properly in the morning.

Matthew shifted unhappily again, his shoulders tensing, neck arching back into the pillow. She soothed him as best she could with her cold hands. His face was set, but muscles worked beneath the skin, twisting his mouth into an expression of pain. Deep wells of bruising lingered about his eyes. With cloth and water, she eased away the crusted blood, but the shadows remained. Her fingertips brushed against his eyelids; it was like a benediction.

His lips were torn and ragged, pasted shut by a combination of blood and thickened, feverish spit. Gently, she drew her wet fingers across his mouth, moistening the dry lips, soothing the broken skin. He moaned suddenly, and his mouth moved against her fingertips. Her fingers slipped as his lips parted; the inside of his lower lip was unbearably soft against her skin. Mary drew back her hand as though scorched. She stared at him, but Matthew lay still, and gave no word or sign.

For so long, she had imagined touching him. Never had she thought that it would be like this.


	2. Potency

_A/N: Hi all. Thanks so much for all your wonderful responses to Part One! I'm relatively new to this fandom, so it's highly exciting to have so much positive feedback from people whose stories I've been reading and admiring for the past few months! Thank you all. I hope you enjoy Part Two._

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><p><em>II. Potency.<em>

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><p><em>Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.<em>

– _Wilfred Owen, 'Strange Meeting'._

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><p>Mary turned the wheelchair to face the lake and put the brake on, smiling companionably at Matthew as she did so. For all the response she got, she might as well have been smiling at his wheelchair. Turning away to allow him a moment to compose himself, Mary settled herself on the bench beside him, enjoying the sunshine, and the smell of grass, and the way the brown-gold leaves of the beech trees bobbed and danced in the breeze after the closeness of the house. Glancing sideways at Matthew, Mary noticed resignedly that once again he had determined not to take any pleasure in their outing. His face was grim and closed, the blue eyes stormy. Mary fidgeted with a fistful of her skirt. She knew what she wanted to talk to him about; she just couldn't think of a way of raising the topic. It was difficult in any case to have a conversation with a man who had said fewer than six words to her in over a week.<p>

"I got a letter from Lavinia today," she offered, by way of beginning. Matthew's eyes didn't even flicker. The only response was a non-committal grunt.

"She's very upset, Matthew," Mary tried again. "She knows how awful you're feeling, but she's still terribly hurt that you sent her away." Once again, she might as well have tried talking to his wheelchair.

The wind carried the distant clamour of voices, and Mary watched the vehement gesticulations of the little dark figures away beyond the curve of the stream; a group of recuperating soldiers, sent by her father to fell the walnut trees above the long meadow. Autumn was coming to Downton. There was a tang of it in the air, a feel in the fading grass. Fuel would be scarce by mid-winter. Mary watched as, with many yells and much cheering, the first tree came down. Her fingers bunched and twisted in the fabric of her skirt. It was a sad necessity. Wood was not so good as coal, of course, but for the widows of cottagers and small-farmers unable to afford either, a row of walnut trees seemed a small price to pay.

Glancing sideways, Mary noticed that Matthew was also watching the workmen. She wondered if he resented them – their health, their good cheer.

"Look," she began again, from the point where she had broken off. "I know that your motives were noble ones, but I really do think that you've treated Lavinia unfairly." _She loves you_, she wanted to add, but could not bring herself to say.

Matthew's head turned, and his eyes regarded her, as though he were a mechanism operated by clockwork. When he spoke, his voice was clipped, and rusty with disuse.

"I'm sure I don't remember when you and she became such pals."

Mary's eyes snapped to his face, her temper rising. "Oh, I don't know. Perhaps it was when she confided in me while crying her eyes out after her fiancé threw her aside."

Matthew's mouth twisted momentarily, and his eyes hardened, but he said nothing. Mary felt astray, wrong-footed, awaiting a riposte which was not forthcoming. More than anything, she missed his conversation. Even his anger would be preferable to this deliberate, scathing indifference.

He watched her for a moment, hearing the catch in her breath as she waited for him to respond, relishing the brief moment of her misery in the wake of his withdrawal. He wondered when he had become so cruel. His face tightened, set in the stony expression that had become so familiar of late. He sometimes felt that if he ever wished to smile he would need a textbook to teach himself how to work the appropriate muscles. Determinedly, he refused to let his glance stray towards Mary. He wished that she would just leave him be. He did not want to talk about this. Not now, and certainly not to her.

Bunching her skirt in her fists again, Mary risked another glance at his profile. His face was pale, his lips compressed into a thin line. _Oh well... in for a penny, in for a pound. _

"Look," she said, clasping her hands together in her lap to stop their fidgeting. "I know . . . I know I shouldn't be talking to you of such things... but Lavina's got it into her head that you sent her away because the two of you can never be lovers."

The blood rushed back to Matthew's face. He glanced sharply at her, his eyes bright and hard with rage. He looked angrier than she had ever seen him.

"I don't wish to discuss it," he growled, daring her to pursue the subject. Mary flushed beneath his sudden fury, but if she was otherwise discomposed, she didn't show it. Now that the subject had been broached, she felt it easier to keep talking than to retreat.

"She also said that she's told you it doesn't matter to her. I wondered what you thought about that."

"Will you shut up?" Matthew cried, incensed beyond belief, his clenched fist pounding the arm of his chair in emphasis. "Has it not occurred to you that you are absolutely the last person in the world who I want to talk to about this?" He spun his head as far as he was able, releasing the handbrake on his wheelchair to push himself away from her, but Mary reached out with both hands and stopped him with surprising strength.

"Matthew Crawley, don't you dare turn your back on me! You can't run away from this."

His face twisted. His mouth worked bitterly, teeth bared, jaw muscles tensed as he struggled for words. His eyes glittered as he stared at her with something remarkably like hatred. "No. I can't. You're absolutely right, Mary. You know, I'd completely forgotten it. Silly me. But no; as you so sensitively put it, I _can't run _anywhere."

His voice seemed to ring, venomous, in the sudden harsh silence. Mary stared at him, her mouth half-open in an expression of dismay and –_ was it?_ – fear. For a fraction of an instant, the calm veneer had slipped, and as she fought for composure he saw in her eyes what he had dreaded more than anything.

"Don't pity me, Mary," he told her, a hard, almost threatening edge to his voice. "Don't you _dare_ pity me."

Mary's head snapped up. The brief moment of weakness was gone; she flushed with anger.

"Oh, stop behaving like a child, Matthew," she told him. "I have every right to pity you, and I _shall _pity you, as much as I like! How could anyone _not_, knowing what you've been through? But don't you _ever _make the mistake of thinking that because I pity you I think you weak! You're hurting and you're angry, and you've got good reason to be, God knows; you have more right to be angry than anyone. But you have _no right whatsoever_ totake your anger out on me."

Matthew looked mutinous, but he declined to answer. Mary took a shaky breath. _Oh, this was hard. _Far harder than she had imagined it to be. But she had started now, and there was no turning back.

"Lavinia's wrong," she said at last, her voice shaking. "It _does_ matter. Of course it matters. It matters desperately. You deserve more than this, Matthew. You deserve to have lovers, and children, and to stand on your own two feet. I want you to. I would wish you all the lovers in the world if only this had never happened. And I know there's no way that can possibly make it any less bitter... It's not_ fair._ Of course it's not fair! It's an awful, terrible waste. But don't you dare think that you're the only person who's angry about it, Matthew! Of course it _matters._ It matters to you, and it matters to me, and it matters to Lavinia too, whatever she says."

Matthew looked for a moment as though he wanted to strike her. And then, as swiftly as the flicking of a switch, it was gone. As though a shutter had closed in his mind, he crumpled, as suddenly and completely as a puppet with its strings cut. Worse even than his rage was this terrible lassitude: the apathetic, self-interested, careful _blankness _that he adopted when he wished to shut her out. His body slumped backwards in the chair, eyes clouded, lips pressed together in a grim line. One hand worked painfully at his temples, and she wondered if he was even conscious that he was doing it. Her own hands were trembling where they lay.

For a while, there was silence. Almost peripherally, Mary was aware of a blackbird chattering down by the lake. A great wave of misery rose up in her chest, composed as much of anger as of pity. She bit her tongue, wanting to rail and storm at him; she imagined herself striking him, pummelling him with both fists, overturning his wheelchair so that he crumpled in the wreckage of it; anything, if only it would force him to acknowledge her. Did he think she didn't feel this just as bitterly, just as agonizingly as he did? Her eyes blurred with tears, and she sprang from the bench, striding several paces with her arms folded tight across her chest, selfishly glad in this moment that he could not follow her.

With bile stinging his throat, Matthew watched her. She came to a halt under the Lebanon cedar, her back resolutely to him. As he watched, she raised a hand to her face with a quick, angry movement, and he realised that she was fighting back tears. A thin tendril of pity broke through his shell of self-loathing. Half-consciously, he felt his hands clenching and unclenching against the arms of his wheelchair. How was it that everything he did seemed to hurt her?

The wind plucked at her skirt, pulling it against her legs exactly as it had done on the day of the garden party. The wind smelled of autumn – wood smoke, the cool, metallic taint of fallen leaves, and there, behind it all, the crisp, clear breath of the first snow. His memory strayed to the snows in France: briefly beautiful, and then merely another element in the unyielding quagmire. When the snow was fresh, the men's feet would sink right over the tops of their puttees, every step marking a crater as deep as a post-hole. And then, just occasionally, their steps would meet with resistance, and, looking down, they would see a tiny patch of khaki, frozen beneath their boots. Brass buttons, pockets, frost-split seams, even sometimes a face, raw and blackened and unrecognisable. Corpses like paving stones, the men pacing delicately from one to another, in some twisted version of the childhood game. _Step on a line, break your own spine... _

With a great effort of will, Matthew wrenched himself from his memories. He had the strangest feeling that Mary had been watching him, but she still stood with her back to him, her arms folded protectively about her chest. Wisps of wild, dark hair curled at the base of her neck, fluttering in the light wind. She was wearing the grey dress that she had worn when he first awoke in the hospital, practical, subdued, so unlike the Mary of his fantasies and half-remembered dreams. She had never looked more beautiful.

He still wanted her. He knew it with a passionate, possessive jealousy the like of which he had never known before. But the gulf between them now was insurmountable. _You always make everything so black and white_, her voice accused him. And yet it _was_ black and white. She still had a future, and he had none. He still loved her, and yet he could not. _Was this what it felt like to be blind?_, he wondered. As a child, he had often played at it, walking around his room, or daringly, out into the street, with his eyes tight shut, feeling his way with his hands. Was this what it was really like? To realise that a whole other world existed, just _there_, just beyond your grasp, and to know that you could never reach it. He wanted to go to her. To take those few, little steps, to fold her in his arms, to kiss her and kiss her until all enmity was swept away. He stared, only half-seeing, at his lap, willing himself to move. The thick cloth of his uniform was smooth across his thighs, bunched about his knees and groin. He could not feel it. He could not feel the useless prick, stuffed pathetically inside his shorts. To think that they had joked about this... _"Imagine being hit in the goolies!" _Carter had chortled. _"Not even a blind whore would have you!"_ Matthew found himself blinking back angry tears, suddenly disgusted with himself. He glared at his unresponsive limbs, willing his muscles to tense, his legs to straighten.

Half-unwilling, his gaze was drawn back to Mary – the straight back, the folded arms, the tense, unhappy set of her shoulders. A little wind stirred the beech trees, yellowing leaves tumbling ungraciously towards the stream. Like the paper boats of the children he would never have, he watched them twist and curl upon the eddies. At long last, Matthew spoke, and his voice was more tired, more defeated than Mary had ever imagined possible.

"It just hurts," he said quietly, "to realise that I'll never be able to hold a woman I love in my arms and... and make her happy." He paused, and she turned slowly towards him, but he was not looking at her. He was gazing at his hands, clenched in his lap, and his voice was so low that she struggled to hear it.

"It just makes me wish that I'd done something about it when I had the chance."

A memory flashed before Mary's eyes. Themselves – younger, more impulsive. _That night in the library . . . _his hand moving over her breast; searing kisses overwhelming the pulse beating in her throat; the jolt of surprise, and fear, and exhilaration that she'd felt when she recognised the hard swell beneath the rough cloth of his trousers as he'd pressed her sharply against the windowsill... Mary swallowed, her throat suddenly tight.

"It makes me feel so useless," Matthew whispered. "This – impotency – it's far more than just physical... It's as though a part of my mind has been shut off too. Do you know, every time I see a pretty girl, I feel sickened with myself – as though it's wrong and unclean of me even to notice her. And the way the nurses wash me, and dress me, and prod me all over, like there's nothing indecent in it. Three months ago everyone would have been scandalised if you and Sybil had so much as seen me without a jacket on, and now somehow you're entitled to strip my clothes off and rub liniments over my naked back, just because I can't feel it! I can't even take a piss without a nurse to hold my hand, and yet I'm suddenly allowed to be left alone in your company for hours at a time – because I'm not a threat any more! How can I be? I'm scarcely even a man."

His fists pounded uselessly on the arm of his wheelchair. Mary couldn't think what to say. She stepped towards him, wanting to touch him, wanting, yet fearing his response. Matthew's face had fallen into the customary lines of misery again, his eyes determinedly looking anywhere but at her.

"I'm sorry," he said at last, and Mary was relieved to see him cast half a glance at her face. "I'm sorry if I've shocked you. That was... unspeakably crude of me. I shouldn't..."

"Don't." Mary interrupted, coming to kneel beside him, her hands resting beside his on the arm of his chair. "Don't say that. There truly is nothing you can say that will shock me, Matthew. Do you think I haven't thought it all already?"

He threw her a glance both abashed and grateful, and in exchange she offered a tentative smile. Mary drew a breath. She couldn't leave it there.

"I know it's awfully different," she continued, in a gentler voice. "But I don't want you to think that it makes you any less a man, Matthew. You're good, and brave, and clever, and you're still..." she swallowed, forcing herself to articulate the thought, to expose her hand far more than she wished to. "You're handsome, and attractive, and _potent_ – strong – I mean it, Matthew. Don't look at me like that for saying it."

She did mean it, too. Even now, even after all that had happened, she knew that she had only to touch his hand, or to hear his voice unexpectedly to feel like she was twenty-one again, and kissing him for the first time. Fragmented images half-formed in her mind – Matthew as a father, surrounded by a mob of tousled, golden-headed sons, teaching them to ride, and swim, and break hearts. Matthew as a lover: his mouth gentle; his hands eloquent; his eyes dark with desire, and intellect, and with something else, indefinable. She swallowed. She had no wish to dwell on that particular thought.

"I know I shouldn't be saying this," she continued, in a more level tone. "I _know _it's improper – but you're still a _man_, Matthew. And I won't let you think that I don't notice it, just because you're in a wheelchair."

He looked at her then, really looked at her. Her face was set and defiant in spite of the slight flush that coloured her cheeks. For the moment shocked out of his self-pity, Matthew stared at her, wondering if she could possibly have meant it. Embarrassed, Mary glared back at him, her mouth set in an expression that was so endearingly familiar that he felt an unexpected inclination to laugh. Impulsively, he smiled at her, and as their eyes met, he was aware, for the first time since his injury, of a spark between them – a warmth and frisson both familiar and strange.

For a long time, they were silent, lost in their own thoughts. A last, Matthew spoke, and his voice was low and sweet.

"You know," he said, a laugh half caught in his throat, though his eyes stung: "You've actually succeeded in making me feel slightly human again. I didn't think it was possible."

She smiled tremulously at him, and he bowed his head, staring at the slim white fingers lying inches from his own. _Everything is black and white, in the end_, he thought, but didn't say.

They sat silent together, their heads bowed, with the echo of the unlived years lying, like the snows of France, between them and over them.


	3. Armistice

_A/N: Well, here we all are... thanks for sticking with it, and for all your lovely reviews. :-) I had to be a bit ruthless with this chapter, as all the other characters seemed to want to push their way in before the end. I had rather a job keeping the focus on M/M! Hope you all enjoy. Cheers._

_-Ev._

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><p><em>III. Armistice.<em>

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><p><em>They went with songs to the battle, they were young.<em>

– _Laurence Binyon, 'For the Fallen'._

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><p>Matthew was quietly furious. He was in pain, as weak as a kitten, and just as incapable. The last thing on earth he felt like doing was attending a village party. But the women had brooked no arguments. Sybil and Lavinia had cajoled, and when that failed, his mother had bullied. He knew that they were trying to help him, and only that thought had kept him from being unspeakably rude to all of them, but they failed to understand that all he wanted was to be left alone.<p>

The armistice officially took effect at eleven o'clock; they had stood together in the great hall to honour it. Or at least, everyone else had stood. Matthew's thoughts fell back into the familiar loop. Bitterness, impotence, self-disgust. He shut his eyes against a particularly savage surge of pain in his lower back as his wheelchair jolted over a rock. The chair was being pushed by Thomas, who had been surprisingly tender about the whole thing. Then again, Thomas was probably guilty about having survived more or less intact. Matthew clenched his jaw, his expression stony. Everyone was familiar by now with his moods and brittle silences; they no longer attempted to draw him from his irritable, carefully-constructed shell. It was almost a relief. Only, a few of them still looked at him as though he were a child throwing a tantrum: his mother, cousin Violet, and of course, Mary.

The village, when they arrived, was swathed with bunting in red and blue and white, and paper lanterns hung in strings between the trees. A small stage had been erected in a corner of the village square, and was occupied by a band, sweating slightly in shabby dinner jackets. Quite a few of their number appeared to be missing, Matthew noted, and the trumpet player was in a wheelchair, struggling to adjust a music stand to this new, lowered height. Right in the centre of the square, an enormous bonfire stood waiting to be lit, and in a series of tents off to one side tradesmen were setting up beer barrels on long trestles while village women laid out trays of teacups and plates of scones and cakes.

For awhile, the group of soldiers, nurses, servants and family that had come down from the big house hung together awkwardly, all slightly ill at ease at this intermingling of sexes, statuses and ranks. With a rasp of strings, the band had started up, and eventually a dance broke out. A few of the servants went to join in, Thomas among them, though his place behind Matthew's wheelchair was filled almost instantly by Lavinia. Matthew scowled, watching as Sybil was drawn into the dance by a soldier with his face bandaged. The band was favouring songs that could be danced by a group rather than by partners, he noticed, perhaps in an attempt to avoid drawing attention to the scarcity of men.

Lavinia made a show of tucking a blanket fussily around his knees, but he pushed her away.

"Go and dance," he told her, knowing as he did so that it was pointless.

His gaze flickered to Mary, who stood a little to one side, uncertain now as to her role in the proceedings. Their relationship had been strained since Lavinia had returned. The desperate intimacy in which they had so briefly existed was gone, dispersed by a cold, jarring reality. He supposed that he had been lucky to be allowed even those few months' grace. She was more than he deserved.

"Please dance," he said again, more for Mary's benefit this time than Lavinia's. "I shall be quite content to sit on the sidelines and watch the show." A lie, but by no means the worst of them.

Pushing his chair away from the women, he found himself on the outskirts of a small cluster of men. They were grouped on benches around a trestle table, mugs and tankards at their elbows. Most were in uniform, and they watched the dancers with expressions ranging from wistfulness to loathing. Three of the men had canes propped within arm's reach; another had only half the normal complement of limbs. A thin, pale man in middle age turned sightless eyes towards Matthew as he approached. Two others, a corporal and a private, were in wheelchairs. As he drew closer, Matthew was surprised to see Mr Bates sitting quietly amongst them; he motioned for Matthew to join them, and he went gratefully, glad that in this company, at least, no one would look twice at him. Men from the village, tradesmen, farmers... None that he recognised. No one who could possibly connect the man that he had been to the cripple he had become.

Lavinia had trailed behind him. She paused now, awkwardly, unsure of how to behave in this company of maimed and silently staring men. Matthew felt a sudden rush of anger – at her youth, her obliviousness, her unconscionable desire for martyrdom.

The corporal in the wheelchair offered a grim handshake. "Where were you?"

"The Somme. Amiens."

The man nodded. "Likewise."

Handshakes were proffered around the table, and names, like bullets.

"Ypres."

"Passchendaele."

"Gallipoli."

Matthew nodded. There was not much more to say.

The conversation was slow, the drink plentiful. Unconsciously, Matthew found himself watching the dancers. He spotted Sybil quickly, her fine red dress and vibrant movement drawing the eye immediately. She was dancing with Branson, Matthew noted with amusement, and paying no heed at all to the disparaging glances cast their way by the Dowager Countess. Her skirts spun, her eyes sparkled, radiant with some secret joy. _She was so like Mary_. As his eyes roamed over the dancers, he picked out Anna, dancing with a rakish, gypsy-like youth in a scarlet waistcoat, and Edith, looking shy and pretty in the arms of a scarcely-limping Evelyn Napier. The enterprising Thomas, meanwhile, had taken advantage of the gender imbalance and was dancing with two girls at once. Matthew felt the shutters close down in his mind once more, tasting bile in the back of his throat. One of the girls was William's Daisy.

He scrutinised the crowd without seeing, heard without comprehending the low voices on either side of him. He had not been permitted to attend William's funeral.

And then, almost beside them, was Mary. She was dancing with a soldier Matthew didn't recognise – a tall, handsome man in a captain's uniform. Watching them, the world about him fell away. She was as breath-takingly lovely as he had ever seen her. Her dark hair was knotted loosely, and she had discarded her coat. Since the war, she had worn mostly grey and sober blue, yet all this suited her; unadorned, she only looked more exquisite by comparison. The man she danced with matched her well: tall and strong, his hair bright and fair beneath his cap. She moved gracefully against him, seeming scarcely to need his guidance. _Was that how they had looked together? _Matthew wondered. The thought filled his mind, refusing to be banished. _Mary dancing, unchanged and lovely, in the arms of a man with golden hair... _Matthew turned away. His hands tightened on the arms of his wheelchair, and he watched the knuckles bunching, the muscles working, tendons tensing and un-tensing beneath the skin. He listened cynically as the band endeavoured to improvise a substitute for an obviously missing flute solo.

_God, what a farce..._

At long last, a breathless silence fell, and Reverend Travers, dapper and elderly in his cleric's collar, invited them to join hands in a prayer of thanksgiving. Immediately, Lavinia was kneeling beside Matthew's wheelchair, and she clasped his hands between her own. Letting the words of the prayer wash over him, he tried to think of France: the broken land, and the tortured sky, and the men that he had known. _Murphy, Mountfort, Harvey, Collins..._ he could remember the names, but not the faces. Even William was blurred in his mind's eye: a vague image of mud and cigarette smoke, fatigues and wheat-blond hair.

Unbidden, unfamiliar, the emotion rose up in his chest; a great wave of longing, and grief, and regret. It was not the words of the priest that moved him, but the people; as his eyes moved over the crowd, each familiar face, each name he knew brought a sting of love to his heart. His mother, standing side by side with Cousin Violet. Sybil, with her arms about her old friend Gwen. Directly behind them, he was surprised and moved to see Branson hand in hand with Thomas, both of them with their heads bowed, uncharacteristically sober and reflective. As his eyes travelled the crowd, he noticed Cora with Miss O'Brien, and – to his surprise – both the elder and the younger Mr Molesley. Mrs Patmore with Mrs Bird; Mrs Hughes with Mr Carson; Edith and Robert in amongst a jumble of convalescent officers. Over by the hitching post was Daisy, her small hand now engulfed in Mr Bates' enormous one. Beside Bates stood Anna, the sleeve of her dress brushing against his jacket.

And there, on Anna's other side was Mary; their hands were clasped, their heads bent close together. Not for the first time, Matthew found himself wondering at the closeness of the relationship between the two women. High born and low, dark featured and fair, standing demurely side by side. Mary was the taller of the two, and with her head so inclined towards Anna, Matthew found that he could not see her face.

The prayer ended, and a collective sigh went up. Many of those assembled were crying quietly. Matthew found himself wondering whether there were people were gathered together in German villages at this moment, holding hands and giving thanks for this day which so few of them had ever thought to see. Although for the Germans, of course, there was not even the hollow comfort of a victory to claim in restitution for their sons...

With a rasp of strings, the band started to play, and a murmur of low voices rose to join in the words:

_Abide with me, fast falls the eventide, _

_The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide . . ._

Matthew's head fell forward. His eyes were blurring. Lavinia was smiling at him, squeezing his hands, but he could not look at her. People were stirring now, beginning to move about, exchanging words and embraces with neighbours, wiping away tears. As the song drew to a close, the band slipped smoothly into _Land of Hope and Glory. _The mingling of voices was low and sweet, their victory tempered, muted now by grief. For some time, the members of the little community sang together, taking comfort in old words and familiar faces. Eventually, Sybil and some of the younger folk broke away, and another dance began. Beer was poured, and cups of tea were passed from hand to hand, and gradually a wave of chatter broke out again.

"Go and dance," Matthew told Lavinia, and when she made to protest he pressed her hand and smiled, feeling suddenly ashamed at the way he had treated her.

"Go on," he said. "Or go back to the house with Mother, if you'd prefer. There's someone I want to talk to." He turned his wheelchair and pushed away from her, his heart lighter, somehow, as if a weight had lifted from his chest that he had scarcely known was there.

He found her on the gentle slope above the green, sitting quietly beneath a bare and weathered chestnut tree. She had been on the periphery of his thoughts all evening, and there she sat: quiet, solitary, almost as if she were waiting for him. He struggled slightly to get his wheelchair to the top of the rise, but he noted with satisfaction that his arms were already stronger, the muscles in his back moving more freely than they had a week ago. Mary made no move to help him, and for that he was grateful, but she smiled at him as he drew close.

Grey dusk fell, the pale winter sun sinking in a shroud of flame, but the revelry and the whirl of the dancers never paused. With much ceremony, the Dowager Countess was prevailed upon to light the bonfire; it caught with a rush and a spout of flame, much to the delight of the shrilly squealing and exceedingly muddy boy scouts who had materialised at her elbow. Smoke swirled upwards, and the flames caught and rose: pyre, pagan rite, and sacrament all in one. Then the lanterns were lit, and the trees blossomed with light, pink and green and gold. The evening drew on, and the dance continued: ancient, primeval, driving away all darkness and all sin.

Mary sat on a chequered blanket on the grass beside him, her legs curled up beneath her, one hand lightly encircling her ankle in its elegant, burnished-leather boot. Her shining dark head rested on the arm of his wheelchair, and he had to exercise a great deal of self control to prevent himself from reaching out and stroking the fine, dark locks: to tuck the stray curls behind her ear, to trail his fingers gently down the curve of her neck, making her shiver with desire . . . He could do it, he knew he could. It was the one thing he could say for either of them; they had always known exactly what it took to drive each other wild. Lord knows, he had done it before. Matthew shared a grim smile with himself. They had always thought him so noble, he remembered –Robert, his mother, Lavinia, even cousin Violet. And all the time, he had been needling her mercilessly, in the way that only he knew how – running his thumb casually across the inside of her wrist as he took her hand, sliding his fingertips beneath the straps of her evening gowns as they danced, holding her gaze from behind doors and potted ferns and wine glasses . . . She lifted her head slightly, watching the sparks swirl upwards, and his eyes followed a wispy, rebellious curl as it swept the back of her neck, brushing against the two tiny freckles that he wondered if even she knew she possessed. His fingers ached to reach out and touch her, to translate all of his pent up tenderness and rage to her in that language which only they could understand. He _could_ do it. He knew he could. But if he did, then there could be no more hiding; she would understand him, and she would respond, and then where would they be?

A sharp tendril of desire uncoiled within him, and it took all of his self control to remind himself that it was not real. A phantom sensation thrown up by his subconscious, as Clarkson would have told him. _Sometimes, it may seem as if you feel something – a tingling in your legs, or a sexual impulse. But it is not true feeling, only the memory_ _of the feeling re-asserting itself_. Matthew clenched his fist, trying to stifle the heightened awareness, the impossible _potency_ that he always felt in Mary's company. It did not feel much like a memory to him.

As if feeling his gaze upon her, Mary's face tilted upwards, and she smiled as she met his eyes. Before he knew what he was doing, Matthew had smiled back, and his hand had reached out to smooth the sleek dark hair back from her forehead. Sure enough, he felt her shiver at the contact, the slight frisson between them that always sent a jolt of longing through his abdomen. He was acutely aware that he had avoided touching her since before he had sent Lavinia away.

She was still looking at him, her smile somehow contriving to be both impish and demure. To excuse his movement, he stroked her hair again and smiled teasingly, trying to ignore the way the reflected firelight danced and trembled in her eyes. Mercifully, she broke his gaze, turning back to watch the column of sparks that sprang up as a couple of village boys threw yet more boughs onto the fire, to yells and cheers from all assembled. She did not say anything, and he let his hand lie against her hair, watching the light play over the glossy strands.

They remained like that for a long time, watching the bonfire and revelry in companionable silence. Below them, down beside the band, Sybil and her cohorts were still dancing, singing somewhat breathlessly in their own accompaniment. Matthew grinned, imagining what cousin Violet would say, and glad for Sybil's sake that the older Crawleys had retired for the night. On the grassy knoll beside the tavern Anna and Mr Bates were talking quietly together; Daisy, half asleep, lay with her head on Anna's knee. And Matthew was fairly certain that Thomas had disappeared somewhere off into the darkness, accompanied by the elegant gypsy in the red waistcoat. He was not sure where Lavinia had got to; he should probably feel guilty about that. But Matthew was tired of guilt. He was tired of attempting to convince himself that things were ever going to be any other than they were. And still, he could not shake from his mind the sudden tingling in his feet, the almost-awareness of feeling as they had left the great hall that morning. He exhaled slowly, swallowing the fear and the hope together. Not yet. _Not yet._

The night wound on, with no sign of the party abating. The stars were all out, brighter and colder than he could remember having seen them since France. Mary disappeared for a brief while, and returned with mugs of warm cider, which they sipped companionably. Mary, he could tell, was quite taken with the novelty of all of this – of purchasing cider drawn from huge oak barrels by a man with a black beard and his shirt open at the collar; of drinking out of doors from crude pewter tankards and watching children roast apples and chestnuts in the outskirts of the fire; of sitting on the ground, outside, at night, safe in the anonymity of shadows and half-light. He watched the firelight flicker in her eyes as she sat, almost entranced. Of its own accord, his hand found its way back to her hair, as she leant against the arm of his wheelchair.

A village boy wandered past them, hawking roast apples for sixpence each. Mary declined, blushing, but when he walked past again, she bought one, her cheeks pink, her eyes bright with such excitement that Matthew had to laugh. Somehow, his bad mood of the last few months was fallen away, and Mary looked so joyful to see him unexpectedly laughing that he felt ashamed. Mary pouted prettily at him for laughing at her, and refused to let him share her apple, which she split open in a twist of paper to reveal the centre stuffed with a sugary mess of currants. She tore off a tiny piece and ate it with every evidence of delight, laughing as she licked caramelised sugar from her fingertips. Scooping up another dainty portion, she waved it teasingly in front of Matthew's nose. Surprised at his own audacity, Matthew caught her wrist deftly between his two hands, and before she knew what was happening, had captured the morsel in his mouth. He tasted sugar and nutmeg, flicking his tongue between her fingers, lapping teasingly at the juice that trickled down her palm. Her lips were parted, half in surprise, half in laughter, but he refused to release her hand: taking her little finger gently between his teeth, encircling it with his tongue, sucking the remnants of the apple from each finger in turn. Apple juice and sugar dripped onto his uniform, and he found that he didn't care a bit. Bending his head, he caught a stray droplet slipping down the edge of her hand, and closed his mouth over her wrist, nibbling gently at the base of her thumb, tasting sugar and cinnamon, charcoal and wood smoke, his tongue sweeping and nuzzling at the pulse that beat beneath her skin.

Mary's eyes met his own, and he knew in that single glance that his apology was accepted, her forgiveness granted, their kinship and love re-affirmed. He released her wrist, smiling, and was gratified to feel her immediately take his hand and press it. With a great shout of triumph, the last load of wood was tossed onto the fire. Sparks fountained up, wheeling and spiralling overhead, and ebullient cheers echoed all around them. The younger ones began a dance, more frenzied than any yet, and still Matthew and Mary sat together, hand in hand, sharing the remains of the apple between them, as close as they could get with a wheelchair separating them. Matthew let out a breath he had not known he had been holding – a long, painful sigh. He was alive, and had returned; Mary was with him. It was Armistice Day, and they had made their peace. For the moment, it was enough.


End file.
